This invention relates to baseball batting practice devices and, more particularly, to a batting practice machine which presents the batter with a tethered ball that repeatedly revolves past the batter simulating a ball that has been pitched.
Centrifugal batting practice machines are well known to those skilled in the art. Typically, such batting practice machines include a ball tethered to the end of a cord that is revolved in a horizontal plane about a motorized base unit. A batter approaches the operating machine and positions him or herself adjacent the path described by the rotating machine to hit the ball with a bat as it circles past. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,872,675 and 5,184,816 disclose baseball batting practice devices which are designed to swing a tethered ball in a substantially horizontal path to repeatedly present the batter with a moving baseball to allow hitting practice.
However, the batting practice machines of the prior art tend to present the ball to the batter at a consistent vertical location at a constant rate of speed. Although such a device will provide useful practice to the beginning player, a batting practice machine capable of simulating pitches of various speeds and vertical locations has obvious advantages.
Thus, the present invention has been developed to provide a batting practice machine which operates to produce randomness in the pitches delivered so that the batter is unable to anticipate the next pitch thereby increasing his batting skills.